


the way out is not the window in

by earlofcardigans



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Comment Fic, F/M, Inception AU, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 12:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlofcardigans/pseuds/earlofcardigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/60569.html?thread=1526937#t1526937">this prompt</a> at the be_compromised Promptathon.</p>
<p>Inception!AU: They aren't each other's totem (and reality).</p>
            </blockquote>





	the way out is not the window in

Natasha has a brokedown tin bracelet. She knows every dent and scratch. She also knows every scar and indent of Clint’s body. But nothing is more real to her, here, than her bracelet and what she knows to be real right before her.

Her memories are not her own most of the time. She’s filled up with people walking around she can’t remember having ever met, places someone ghosted from cities and states and countries.

She’s been everywhere. And nowhere.

And now she’s down farther than any of them have gone before.

Clint convinced her it would be safe, and Clint is the only person she can trust in a sea of unfamiliar friends and friendly strangers.

Clint doesn’t keep her remembering of places she might have to return to. Clint doesn’t register at all when she finds a building so much like one in Kiev when she was a girl and lost on her own then, too.

The only thing keeping her from floating away in the white mist of the ocean to her left is a brokedown tin bracelet.

She can run her right thumb over it, and twirl it and twirl it until it shines.

It’s the only reason that will lead her home.  
++

Clint sits on grass greener than any color he’s ever remembered seeing. To his left is a wide open sea with cragged rocks breaking the waves, and behind him, he hears his life.

They make the most noise on Saturdays.

He knows that somehow. Somehow he’s tethered to people he can’t remember meeting. He’s bound to someone with bright sunflower hair.

Clint has in his hand always an arrowhead from days gone past that he knows he dug from the ground with his ten year old fingernails.

It’s smooth on the surface, jagged along one side, the other side less so from Clint’s fingers—ten years old, eighteen, twenty-six, forty-one.

Clint can’t turn around, turn into the sound. That makes the sunflower hair real.

It means the taste of cobalt and the smell of ginger and lace will float away from him, real memory or not.  
++

When he spots her, Natasha knows they are together topside. They are lying side by side on a bed where Coulson anchored them.

She doesn’t smile at him, doesn’t acknowledge that he’s there, in her mind, in her dreams—both real and fabricated.

He doesn’t smile back at her.

She knows her way to him, knows, too, that he has the same convoluted way back to her.

She knows that they will wake up, same hotel, same Coulson, same distance separating them.

She changes nothing. Flicks back the cuff on her wrist and carries on.

He never falters, puts one hand in a pocket and keeps moving.  
++

While they are together in the deep down, farther than either of them had been alone, they hold hands.

Clint lets her lead him to a place that reminds her of a home she may never have had. She flirts with the whites of the sea. He draws colors from the highest building to the sky.

They aren’t supposed to fit together. Only in the dream when it’s go time. They aren’t supposed to cling to the other. Even though they swear neither does.

And maybe she’s not the person he sees, remembers, she is the one that’s always beside him.

Maybe he’s not the anchor keeping her there, but he can’t imagine the weight of anything without her.


End file.
